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Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Devil’s Wedding Night / Il plenilunio delle vergini (1973)

For me, The Devil’s
Wedding Night is kind of like a Dracula movie but with Rosalba Neri playing Dracula, which is just a prepossessing idea. However,
that’s not quite what it is, as it plays more like a spinoff, fanfic, or sequel
to Dracula, where Count Dracula is the stuff of legend, with his power being
the focus of archeological research. It’s interesting that in the film’s story Edgar Allan Poe seems to be an upcoming
new sensation, which sets it around the first half of the 19th century, making
it predate the events in Bram Stoker’s
novel that occur around the 1890s. So, The
Devil’s Wedding Night could actually be a prequel to Dracula. I mean, who
was that mysterious smirking man in the woods, at the tavern, and on the castle
grounds we kept seeing? The mysterious man is a nice touch who’s most likely a
servant to the ring, but there’s nothing ruling out that he could have been
Dracula the whole time, perhaps a powerless Dracula who needs the black mass wedding ceremony to be reborn.

Farfetched theories aside, The Devil’s Wedding Night is not a perfect film, but it makes for a
perfect gothic horror experience. Just about every kind of gothic hallmark fans
expect and revere are here, and they are executed exquisitely, but it is likely
that the biggest reason most seek out this film is because of Rosalba Neri as the erotic La Contessa
Dolingen de Vries. She does not disappoint here. The countess holding up her red
light emitting ring to the moon atop the castle has always been the primary
image that comes to mind when I think of this film.

This is one of Rosalba Neri’s most celebrated roles
who, alongside Mark Damon, really
arrests herself to the part. I would say that Mark and Rosalba have
chemistry, but the show stealing chemistry is really between Mark Damon and Mark Damon. That’s right, Damon
has an amusing dual role, playing two brothers Karl and Franz Schiller. One is
just a little more goth and mischievous than the other. The two scenes where
both brothers interact are entertaining, especially when Damon really hams it up as the less virtuous, Poe quoting brother,
Franz.

The opening grabber is a shot of a woman in one of those big white night
gowns running in the woods, being chased by something off camera. It’s quick
and feels detached from the rest of the movie, almost interchangeable, like it
could be attached to the beginning of almost any horror movie twenty years
before or after this one. Probably because it reminds me of the opening
flashback from Ernest Scared Stupid
(1991), I kind of like the way the person holding the camera is also running
behind the fleeing woman, working like a shaky POV cam shot from the pursuer.

The
following credit sequence kicks off with an exciting, epic theme by Vasili Kojucharov set to visuals of the great
Castle Piccolomini in Balsorano, color filtered lesbian orgies, ritual
sacrifices, and that tunneling camera effect, which I still don’t understand.
I’m not sure if this is the first time the tunneling camera was used, but it
did become trendy in the 1990s, being used in Stargate (1994), Spawn (1997)
as well as the ending to Final Fantasy 7
(1997) to name a few, although quite impressive for being pre-CG in The Devil’s Wedding Night.

The movie is
supposed to be based on an original story (a book?) called “The Brides of
Countess Dracula” by Ralph Zucker and
Ian Darby. Judging by that title, it
kind of makes sense why this feels a little like Dracula fanfic with Rosalba Neri in the role of Dracula, or
at least substituting the Dracula figure.

Karl Schiller (played by Mark Damon, an actor who eventually
became a producer with an impressive range of production credits, such as The Never-Ending Story (1984) and The Lost Boys (1987)) is an
archeologist researching a mystical ring that was responsible for Dracula’s powers.
The ring actually has an intriguing history, as it was passed between different
powerful figures, such as Alexander the
Great and Attila the Hun. It is
known as the Ring of the Nibelungen, which is supposed to date back much
further than Wagner.

What’s also
charming is the cozy little gothic library/study set that I find to be
inspirational. When I find myself stuck with a lot of work to do, I like to
pretend I am Karl Schiller in his library surrounded by encyclopedias and
mystical tomes.

Now, Karl manages to get a lot of useful information from one
of those “McGuffin” books, most particularly on where to go to find the ring,
the most obvious of places, Castle Dracula in Transylvania. His brother Franz
crashes his research session, almost belittling him for his superstitious
fancies but still lends an ear to Karl’s predictions and learns of his “plant and payoff”
protective amulet of Pazuzu

Karl makes known his intention to journey to a
castle in Transylvania to find the ring, which does end up feeling like a
counterpart to Jonathan Harker’s diary.

Now what got me more than once in this
movie is that despite Karl planning on making the journey to Dracula’s castle,
without warning Franz takes the protective amulet and starts off instead. Franz
did allude to having gambling debts, so perhaps he cleverly let his brother
only think he didn’t believe him only to leave early to get to the ring before
his brother. It was unexpected, and I had to rewind it a couple of times to
make sure I wasn’t confused.

I do love the Transylvanian setting in this movie
that was actually filmed in L’Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy. There’s a certain magic
to the Castle Piccolomini. Around the same time, Renato Polselli was filming one of my favorite films at the same
castle, The Reincarnation of Isabel
(1973). A couple other great films made there were The Lickerish Quartet (1970) and The Bloody Pit of Horror (1965).

Franz stops at the village inn and
manages to take the Innkeeper’s daughter’s virginity, supposedly exempting her
from a curse involving virgins vanishing in the castle every 50 years. (The
moral of the story: don’t be a virgin on the night of the virgin moon).

After
he arrives to the castle he meets with the countess’s beautiful servant Lara (Esmeralda Barros), who’s in a lethargic
almost hypnotic state. She’s a zombie and her slow languid talking is most
peculiar. Also, the castle interior is suitably colorful, with plenty
of lit candles in the foreground and background.

As to be expected, since it is
daytime when Franz arrives, the Countess is nowhere to be found until night. It
works as a nice buildup to when the film finally reveals its main attraction, Rosalba Neri. Franz finds her at the
piano (that sounds like an organ synth), a beautiful and subtle way of
introducing her. They connect over a splendid gothic dinner setup where the
countess speaks some great lines. One of them feels like a poetic ode to
introversion.

"The peace and quiet, this marvelous sense of solitude and eternal tranquility, which permeates everything around here. It makes me feel more alive." The Countess / Rosalba Neri

The Countess and Franz make love before she turns into a bat and imprisonshim. Karl eventually
shows up, andknowing his missing brother was there before him, he begins his own
investigation.

The movie falls off its rocker at about the
halfway part, and it is freaking fantastic. Shit gets real during the delirious
laughing part, an inebriating segment of hyperactive editing and nightmare
visuals.

That memorable scene when Rosalba
Neri rises nude and bloody among smoke/fog from her coffin is what it’s all
about. If there’s any one moment I’d pick to represent Eurocult, this is it.
The “be-all and end-all."

The narrative builds up to an exploitative occult ritual with
multiple crimson executioners in what is a kind of black mass wedding where
things get sleazy and bloody. During the ritual, Rosalba Neri on the throne emits a sense of power and majesty – a
queen of Eurocult presiding over the exploitation black mass. Being a fashion
accessory kind of person, I have to say that I love her crown and black attire
here.

The closeout isn’t anything too memorable, but it could almost work as
sequel bait, would a sequel had happened. Considering my previous theory on the
mysterious man in the woods, perhaps Dracula could be thought of as the sequel.

If you’re looking to get your Rosalba
Neri and Italian Gothic Horror fix, you really can’t do wrong with The Devil’s Wedding Night. It took
years for me to come back to it, but it is worth rewatching and should be
considered a cult classic. It was directed by Luigi Batzella and an uncredited Joe D’Amato – which means that Death
Smiles on a Murderer (1973) isn’t the only time D’Amato went Gothic, as I formerly thought.

Something about this
movie always makes me want to listen to Mercyful Fate’s Come to the Sabbath, or
maybe even Black Masses, but that song has some real fucked up lyrics.

Reading your review makes me want to go and revisit The Devil’s Wedding Night right away. The film has many similarities to Batzella's somewhat more explicit Nude for Satan: the castle setting, the double roles, bursts of hallucinatory imagery, confusing ending. Both films are essential Eurocult.

Excellent review ! This is one of my favorite Euro-horrors and Rosalba has never looked more beautiful. Her rising naked and blood covered out of that coffin was forever ingrained in my mind when I first saw this on a double bill (I think with Beyond the Door). You guys are right as it does make for an interesting comparison with Nude For Satan.

BTW, Mark Damon has been married to Margaret Markov (Black Mama White Mama and The Hot Box) since 1974 when they meet on the The Arena.

Thank you, Dick! It's one of my favorites too. Despite some if its hokey-nes there's something real authentic and sacred about it. Perhaps that's just the effect that Rosalba Neri in a black wedding dress has on the fancy.